Chumby-Like Widget Engine

[(naw)mcx]

(i made a little potential logo for the project)
(any developers interested? give me a message )

The Panda project will hopefully be a Chumby like system, with an emphases on the alarm clock functions, being easy to use with big buttons and text, and hopefully being easily expandable for more little gadgets.
(hopefully )

The Chumby for any one not in the know.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/13/chumby-one-review/


edit:
mock ups

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Clock/Alarm/Home

Customized

MP3

Email

​

 

[lulzfish]

Dunno what you're talking about but GTK and Qt can both probably do this, no need to make something else.
In fact, I might be writing an alarm application since I only have two alarms at the moment: A battery-powered alarm and a mains-powered alarm. If I add the Pandora, I'll have a battery-backed mains-powered alarm that plays techno. It will be awesome.

 

[(naw)mcx]

Dunno what you're talking about but GTK and Qt can both probably do this, no need to make something else.
In fact, I might be writing an alarm application since I only have two alarms at the moment: A battery-powered alarm and a mains-powered alarm. If I add the Pandora, I'll have a battery-backed mains-powered alarm that plays techno. It will be awesome.

maybe I put it the wrong way. It's more like a super simple UI, easy to control from bed, big buttons, big text, time aware(dimmer at night, so it won't brighten up the room, lighter in the morning).

you could make a song play when you awake, the screen could slowly brighten like a fake sunrise.

roll over, hit one of the big icons, get a nice big view of your new emails.

edit:

something a bit like that, but better.

 

[DaMummy]

....how do you compare this piece to the pandora?

 

[Gary13579]

Confirmed: Pandora will be out by Dec 5th, 2010.

 

[Gary13579]

In all seriousness, this is an awesome idea imho. My main concern is leaving the LCD screen on that long, even if it is dim. If a dev could pop in here and throw an estimate of how long the screens are supposed to last... or if someone has the specs from Archos, it'd be appreciated.

I'll have a battery-backed mains-powered alarm that plays techno. It will be awesome.

I love you.

 

[droneb]

hmm, btw, i was wondering the panda/arm C-A8 capability on low current/sleep consumption modes
it would improve even more the batt time for this kind of apps

 

[(naw)mcx]

In all seriousness, this is an awesome idea imho. My main concern is leaving the LCD screen on that long, even if it is dim. If a dev could pop in here and throw an estimate of how long the screens are supposed to last... or if someone has the specs from Archos, it'd be appreciated.

I'll have a battery-backed mains-powered alarm that plays techno. It will be awesome.

I love you.

I thought, if it was a bedside thing, just leave it plugged in to the wall.

Edit: and thanks for the support

 

[Gary13579]

I thought, if it was a bedside thing, just leave it plugged in to the wall.

Edit: and thanks for the support

My concern isn't battery life, it's LCD life. Either the LCD itself or the backlight would eventually die, especially if left on all night like that.

 

[(naw)mcx]

I thought, if it was a bedside thing, just leave it plugged in to the wall.

Edit: and thanks for the support

My concern isn't battery life, it's LCD life. Either the LCD itself or the backlight would eventually die, especially if left on all night like that.

oh, oh yes!

That makes sense.

The screen can turn off after, say 1am. Or what ever time you want it to shut off for. You could set that with the alarm time.

 

[Qwertyuiop]

Or, if you had a bluetooth remote, you could set the display to turn off after a few minutes. Then, when you want to check the time, just press a button on the remote to turn it back on again.

 

[Gary13579]

I thought, if it was a bedside thing, just leave it plugged in to the wall.

Edit: and thanks for the support

My concern isn't battery life, it's LCD life. Either the LCD itself or the backlight would eventually die, especially if left on all night like that.

oh, oh yes!

That makes sense.

The screen can turn off after, say 1am. Or what ever time you want it to shut off for. You could set that with the alarm time.

Problem with that is I never stay asleep all night. I wake up often and check the time.

The Chumby probably uses an LCD that is specifically designed to withstand being on 24/7 and has a long lifetime. It all comes down to Pandora's LCD imho, which I have no idea how long it's rated for.

 

[Consequence_9]

BRILLIANT!!

A lot of the chumby code is open-source, is it not? Wouldn't it (theoretically) be possible to write an interpreter for existing chumby widgets?

 

[gruso]

I'd love a Chumby Mode! I've wanted a Chumby for ages. I even considered rebuilding my GP2X into a homebrew Chumby, but my inability to do the software side would have made it pointless.

How about utilising the internal mic for screen wakeup? Like a whistle. Or THE CLAPPER.

 

[Gary13579]

CLAP ON *clap clap*

sorry, couldn't resist

 

[Near_Kstor]

Software-wise, I believe it would be simple to put up an app for any language (even python or java) with that behavior. Some of those online functionalities may be a bit harder, but yet feasible. That way, on any OS you may be using on your Pandora, just activate the Chumby App. It can be configured at your will and, after some minutes in disuse (the exact amount could be configured aswell) the screen could turn off.
Whenever you press any button on the Pandora, the screen can turn on again.
So, when the adjusted time is reached, the screen turns on again, showing the current time ( and possibly showing up your mails, tweets and/or feeds - whatever) and play a music of your choice (or random from a pre-defined playlist).

It doesn't sound hard at all to do such a software... not at all. And I really liked the idea...
Perhaps, when I get my Pandora, I could start getting used with deving for Pandy with something by those lines...

 

[Wheels]

.., THE CLAPPER.

I once knew a young lady who answered to that...

Not sure about the oversized interface, but since the Pandora is going to use XFCE (at least until it doesn't) could you set the alarms and whatnot in Orage and then pipe them to the "alarm clock" app?

 

[lulzfish]

since the Pandora is going to use XFCE (at least until it doesn't) could you set the alarms and whatnot in Orage and then pipe them to the "alarm clock" app?

Definitely. I looked through the Orage documentation and found this rather obvious feature:

"Procedure
This makes it possible to use external alarms. You can run any operating system command or script."

So you could just have Orage call the alarm clock application over D-Bus or whatever is most suitable. (I'm guessing D-Bus. The alarm application would be like "alarm" and Orage would be told to call "alarm-fire", which would send a message to an instance of "alarm" over a D-Bus connection. Something tells me this will work.)

 

[Consequence_9]

How about utilising the internal mic for screen wakeup? Like a whistle. Or THE CLAPPER.

ALSO BRILLIANT!!

Maybe just a blow into the mic tho, so as not to disturb *possible* others ;] lol

** Possible as in anyone using the pandora as an alarm clock probably hasn't been near, or with, someone in a looooong time ;P I kid I Kid

 

[lulzfish]

How about utilising the internal mic for screen wakeup? Like a whistle. Or THE CLAPPER.

ALSO BRILLIANT!!

Maybe just a blow into the mic tho, so as not to disturb *possible* others ;] lol

** Possible as in anyone using the pandora as an alarm clock probably hasn't been near, or with, someone in a looooong time ;P I kid I Kid

Maybe just a tap on the case, which would sound like a clap from the mic's perspective, and wouldn't look nearly as stupid.